NATIONAL VIDEO

Gustav sends evacuees to Hall

Aaron Plecenik looks up Sunday from watching coverage in his hotel room on the preparation of New Orleans for Hurricane Gustav. Plecenik has come to Gainesville from New Orleans to escape Hurricane Gustav.

Fearing another Hurricane Katrina, electricians and friends Aaron Plecenik and David Green decided to leave New Orleans on Friday.

Plecenik, accompanied by Lisa James, Green, with Louise West, ended up in Gainesville, where Green lived and worked for nine years before going to New Orleans four years ago.

On Sunday, staying at Days Inn off Queen City Parkway in Gainesville, they watched MSNBC's coverage of the Gulf Coast's newest threat, Hurricane Gustav.

"There is going to be some trauma, real trauma," Green said. "These people can't take that no more."

Weather forecasters expect the storm to make landfall by midday today with frightful force, testing the three years of planning and rebuilding that followed Katrina's devastating blow to the Gulf Coast.

Col. Mike Edmondson, state police commander, said he believed that 90 percent of the population had fled the Louisiana coast. The exodus of 1.9 million people is the largest evacuation in state history, and thousands more had left from Mississippi, Alabama and flood-prone southeast Texas.

Green lived in New Orleans during Katrina. After fleeing that storm, he returned to help residents "get their houses together."

He and Plecenik recall running into dead bodies while doing work.

Many New Orleans residents have had enough. If Gustav causes havoc as predicted, "I don't think they're going to return to New Orleans like this again," Green said.